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Friday, 25 January 2013

Very shortly after New Year, I completed compiling the index for Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy (or 'my book', as it's known around these parts). This means that my work on it is finally over, almost two and a half years after I signed the contract to write it. It's taken so long, I suppose, because my opportunities for dedicated work on it have been few, so most of the images and text were produced in days and hours wrangled from other projects and jobs, but, finally, it's available for preorder at Amazon and other book retailers. You can see the front cover above, featuring everyone's favourite pelagic, antler-crested pterosaur, Nyctosaurus. I'm quite chuffed with the straightforward, minimalist design and title. Too many books on prehistoric animals have to hinge their titles on dinosaurs, so I'm very happy to have avoided something like 'above the heads of dinosaurs' or 'in dinosaur skies' or something equally irrelevant to its content.

For the moment at least, you can order the book for an extremely reasonable £19.46 at Amazon.co.uk but, even at its most expensive, you won't have to pay more than £24.95 ($35.00 for US buyers). For that tiny sum, you'll get a large, snazzy hardback tome featuring over 200 illustrations, 152 colour illustrations of which are in colour, almost 300 pages and something like 110,000 words, referencing over 500 peer-reviewed articles, of pterosaur goodness (further details). Alas, there's still a little waiting to be done before the book reaches your hands. Pterosaurs will finally be published at the end of June, with preorders being delivered on June 23rd of this year. I'm giving serious thought to having some sort of book launch around that time with talks and, possibly, a book signing.

To celebrate reaching this milestone in what felt like my second PhD thesis, I've decided to post the title page image in full, showing Nyctosaurus sailing effortlessly through the air alongside a Cretaceous sunset. It's one of my favourite images from the book, and hopefully befitting one of the most effective soaring animals to have evolved, ever. I've been playing around with Colin Pennycuick's Flight program recently (freely available here), modified as per the paper Mike Habib and I published on pterosaur flight in 2010, and predict Nyctosaurus to have a sink rate (0.478 m/s) and glide ratio (25.8), values comparable or exceeding those of modern wandering albatross (0.624 m/s and 21.2, respectively) and frigatebirds (0.474 m/s and 20.5). The gliding stats for Nyctosaurus are more akin to man-made gliders and sailplanes, which is pretty remarkable: we cannot design a practical manned aircraft more adept at gliding than this animal, let alone a vehicle that can fold up its wings propel itself around on the ground. Yet another reason why pterosaurs rock enormous palaeontological bells.

And finally, my PR agent won't let me go without mentioning that, if you're planning on being an über Pterosaurs fanboy, there's a whole bunch of merchandise featuring this image over at my Zazzle store, which you can buy now to wear and drink from when the book arrives. People will probably think this makes you sad or something, but they'll be wrong.

Reference

Witton, M. P. and Habib, M. B. 2010. On the size and flight diversity of giant pterosaurs, the use of birds as pterosaur analogues and comments on pterosaur flightlessness. PLoS One, 5, e13982.

Saturday, 19 January 2013

I figured that the internet would be awash with palaeoart of Oryctodromeus cubicularis, the small, Blackleaf Formation hypsilophodontid famous for living in family groups within burrows of their own creation(Varricchio et al. 2007). A quick Google image search, thought I, would reveal dozens of images of Oryctodromeus sitting in dens, digging, hanging out in family groups and all that sort of stuff. I was even expecting to make some sharp comments about minor clichés and tropes in the way Oryctodromeus was depicted. Turns out, however, that there aren't many pictures of this dinosaur at all. On reflection, I guess I Oryctodromeus doesn't meet the three Big Criteria for Palaeoartistic Attention: a) it doesn't really have anything to do with bird evolution; b) it doesn't bear any fancy teeth, claws or spikes and c) it wasn't very big. But I still think this is crazy. It was found in a fickin' burrow of its own making. Palaeonerds, artistic and otherwise, spend hours speculating about what sort of interesting behaviour dinosaurs may have got up to, and then one with incontrovertible interesting behaviour is discovered and... we - myself included - don't do much with it, really. Even the PR associated with its discovery favoured a straightforward illustration of an Oryctodromeus head rather than something more exciting, like a depiction of one digging a hole or drowning in its burrow. How odd.

With that in mind, here's a set of Oryctodromeus to help their much needed PR campaign. Rather than showing an Oryctodromeus burrow in section, as is common to the few depictions of this animal that exist, I wanted to draw them as we may see them in life, hanging out at their burrow entrance in a Lower Cretaceous woodland. The burrowing adaptations of the animals, which are clear and obvious across much of the Oryctodromeus skeleton, are not really discernible here, save for their broad, shovelling snouts which I've adorned with thickened scales to resist shovelling abrasion. This is deliberate, however. Much of the burrowing anatomy of Oryctodromeus reflects relatively minor changes to the hypsilophodontid bauplan and they probably didn't look radically different from other hypsilophodontids with their skin and (possibly) fuzz obscuring their skeletons. In addition to their reinforced snouts, we may have noticed that Oryctodromeus had slightly bulkier forelimb anatomy compared to other hypsilophodontids, as these seem to have been their digging limbs (instead of the hindlimbs, as with the rhynchosaurs we met here). Their hindquarters may also have been a little chunkier, as they seem reinforced to provide a stable digging platform. Otherwise, they probably looked much like other members of their clan. Indeed, the overall similarity of Oryctodromeus to other hypsilophodontids suggested to Varricchio et al. (2007) that burrowing behaviours may not be unique to this member of the group.

Much was made of the assemblage of bones found within the Blackleaf Oryctodromeus burrow. The incomplete skeletons, presumably reflecting animals that died within a burrow shortly before or during a flood, represent two juvenile and one adult individual, and additional discoveries of this species (sadly, not in burrows) hint at even larger Oryctodromeus communities of mixed maturity (Krumenacker et al. 2011). I wanted to bring this out in the painting, so have drawn an entire family, with two adults and two juveniles perched atop the head of one parent (did dinosaurs carry their children? Perhaps, seeing as many reptiles and mammals ferry their offspring about when they're especially small). I realised that I'd accidentally made the adults rather different in size rather late in painting the image, but I decided to run with this mistake rather than correct it. First thoughts may be that this could be written off as sexual dimorphism, but I thought it may be better explained though another means: teenage mothers. The early development of reproductive bone histologies in dinosaurs suggests that they, like reptiles, became sexually mature well before they reached their maximum size (generally, no later than halfway to their maximum proportions - Lee and Werning 2008) so it doesn't seem unlikely that some dinosaur couples would be rather mismatched in terms of size if young and old formed breeding partnerships.

Details of an Oryctodromeus burrow; from Varricchio et al. 2007

The upper part of the Blackleaf Formation, which contains the only known Oryctodromeus burrow, represents a well-drained, inland floodplain dotted with lakes and small river channels, set in a relatively warm, seasonal climate. The Blackleaf Oryctodromeus burrow is a fairly large structure that exceeds 2 m in length, and thus extended beneath well into the underlying floodplain muds (see Oryctodromeus burrow details, above, from Varricchio et al. 2007). These clays contain evidence that the floodplain was once fairly well vegetated, with their mottled colouring reflecting variable intrasoil microenvironments associated with root activity and layers of carbonate nodules reflecting dessication of soil layers. I figured our burrowers could make use of these plants, using them to conceal their burrows rather than setting their burrow entrance exposed in a wide, open space. Accordingly, the actual entrance to the Oryctodromeus burrow is not seen here, instead being obscured by the roots of a tree. It's not entirely inconspicuous however, as heaps of sediments below the burrow opening mark material ejected by the tunnellers as they expanded and maintained their dwelling (as seen with badger sets). Because the burrow is long enough to extend through several layers of varicoloured clays, the ejected clays are of a rather different colour to the surrounding soils. Setting Oryctodromeus in such a more vegetated setting also helps to break a palaeoart trope noted at Antediluvian Salad: the "dinosaur conveniently framed by vegetation on an empty patch of dirt" meme. This manner of showing extinct animals certainly makes their anatomy clear, but is comically frequent in palaeoart once you start looking for it. I've certainly added a list of images to this trope, and figure it's time to move my animals off their dirty catwalks and behind the mud, vegetation and shadows of real life.

Finally, and on a related note: it seems I've fallen victim to a most foul palaeoart clichés: A Volcano! Behind Dinosaurs!!1! Volcanoes and dinosaurs seem to walk hand-in-hand in some circles, and the dinosaur imagery I was familiar with in my childhood always seemed to have a volcano bubbling away in the background. It seems that the association of angry mountains and dinosaurs is more of a 'popular' notion than a real palaeoart meme however, presumably because most people with genuine interests in palaeontology and geology know that Mesozoic landscapes were not perpetually exploding. I suppose the popular link between volcanoes and dinosaurs stems from ideas that non-avian dinosaur extinction was likely influenced by the extensive volcanism of the Deccan Traps. Or maybe it's because dinosaur fossils are intertwined with geology, of which volcanoes are the flagship popular topic. Or maybe it's simply pandering to the Lava Adds Awesome and Climatic Volcano Backdrop tropes. Whatever the reason for their prevalence in popular palaeoart, the inclusion of a volcano alongside Oryctodromeus is fairly sound: the Blackleaf Oryctodromeus burrow was made in a landscape that was occasionally inundated by volcanic detritus and tuffaceous sediments, blown in from volcanism occurring to the south west in contemporary Idaho. I'm not sure whether the types of volcano shown here - a classic 'cone' volcano - is appropriate, but the temptation to draw a big mountain belching smoke behind some dinosaurs was too much to resist.

Oh, and finally finally, a big thanks to all the people who've stopped by here thus far before I go. This blog is not even two months old, and I've already been visited over 5,500 times. It's very encouraging and flattering to have this taking off so quickly, so thanks for all the visits, comments and linking that must be happening to make this a minor success already.

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

'Palaeontologist' is synonymous with 'hot', 'fashionable', 'stylish' and all the other cool words in the dictionary. Show your PalaeoPassionTM with pride. Purchase items featuring what noted palaeozoologist Darren NaishTM called WittonianaTM at markwitton.com|storeTM to show the world just how with it you are.

Most importantly, the markwitton.com|storeTM designers want to know what you want. The new store, while hot and sensuous, is still in its early stages, and needs more merchandise. But like all good lovers, we want to give you what you desire most. If you think a piece of artwork from markwitton.com, its sister blog, or archived Flickr gallery would look good on a sexy, sensuous t-shirt, tea towl, coaster set or another piece of merchandise, you need to contact us at mark.witton@port.ac.uk to let us know, and we'll make it just for you*. Genuine requests only please: asking for an item is not an obligation to buy, but please don't request items if you have no intention to purchase them should their design please you.

*And then leave it for sale for anyone else who may like it. But it's you, our special you, that we're thinking of with each sale.

Finally, a brief word on prices. As with any on-demand product, the basic costs for items from the markwitton.com|store are higher than anyone might like, but rest assured that only minimal royalties are being taken: no more than 10% of item cost in the vast majority of cases. Customers outside of the USATM should also bear in mind that the markwitton.com|storeTM ships from the Zazzle warehouse in California, so adjust expectations for postage costs and delivery times accordingly.

Now stop reading this and get shopping, you crazy, sexyTM readersTM you.

Thursday, 10 January 2013

The snowy, chilly plains of Maastrichtian Alaska, where Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum roamed. But were they scaly like other ceratopsids, or covered in protofeathers, as shown here?

So... no pressure here, then. I innocently replaced my festive Facebook profile picture with some detail from the painting above last Sunday (07/01/13) and quickly found a storm (well, gusty conditions) of discussion, 'likings' and shares, with several folks mentioning their anticipation of this post to see what all the fuss is about. The Facebook responses have been interesting and mixed: nods of approval, some head-slapping 'why didn't I think of that', a revelation that Tom Hopp already did this last year and, perhaps more predictably, scepticism from a number of individuals who consider the whole concept very silly indeed. In short, there seems to be a certain amount of expectation in the air about this image, and I wouldn't be surprised if some virtual beer bottles are hurled at me across the Internet should this explanation not prove convincing. Here's hoping I've done my homework properly, then.

The painting in question shows a family of the Alaskan centrosaurine Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum, a species notable for its existence in rather chilly, latest Cretaceous climates at palaeolatitudes of 80-90°. It differs from other pictures of this species by having its Muskox Quotient upped by 500%, replacing the scaly hides of more traditional Pachyrhinosaurus reconstructions with a blanket of fuzz analogous to the fuzzy, unkempt feathers of modern ratites. Fuzzy polar dinosaurs are not unusual in palaeoart nowadays and they result in animals that look immediately more at home in icy, subfreezing climates than their scaly brethren. This image, however, directly contradicts what most folks will say we know about horned dinosaur integument. Some comments on Facebook have already wheeled this argument out: known ceratopsian integuments were predominately scaly, so the concept of a shaggy pachyrhinosaur is nonsense, right? Well, I'm going to argue here that it's not, or at least not a concept that is easily dismissed. Before we go any further, it's worth stressing that I'm not presenting this image as the new 'standard' for Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum: I don't know of any new evidence that confirms the shaggy hides shown here, be it soft-tissue remains of ceratopsids or a new interpretation of dinosaur evolution that suggests super-fuzzy ornithischians were common. Nor, for that matter, do I have the heads up on research indicating that latest Cretaceous Alaskan palaeoclimates were much lower than expected. Instead, across four points, I'm going to argue that, based on what we know of dinosaur evolution, the responses of modern animals to their environments, and - importantly - the vast gulf of unknown data regarding dinosaur appearance, that this concept is as plausible as our scaly variants and, in some respects, may be more plausible. On the way, I'm going to suggest that, as with some other considerations in palaeoart, we may be too conservative when it comes to depicting animal integuments, because we focus too much on their evolutionary relationships without considering their likely adaptations to habitats and lifestyles. Hmm... this is all starting to sound very All Yesterdays, isn't it? That's not a coincidence.

﻿﻿1) Ornithischians were fuzzy, and some were probably fuzzier than others.
﻿﻿First up, the least controversial pin in this case. Thanks to Tianyulong and the early ceratopsian Psittacosaurus, we know that ornithischians were covered in more than just scales, the former being covered in filamentous structures akin to early feathers and the latter possessing long quills (Mayr et al. 2002; Zheng et al. 2009) Accordingly, it's now fairly fashionable, and by no means unreasonable, to restore even large ceratopsids with at least a smattering of quills across their bodies like those seen on Psittacosaurus, reflecting a relict integument from an earlier phase of their evolutionary history. It naturally follows that we should expect some taxa to have been more densely adorned with filaments and quills than others, just as fur and feathers are of variable densities in modern species. Accordingly, while a shaggy pachyrhinosaur is certainly at the 'extreme' end of our predictions for an ornithischian integument, it does not directly contradict anything we know regarding dinosaur evolution. Ceratopsids probably had the appropriate genetic blueprints to produce a shaggy animal, so long as the right conditions promoted its expression. There is a question of how appropriate it is to cover a ceratopsid in shaggy integumentary structures however, in light of preserved skin impressions of other ceratopsids. How likely is it that any horned dinosaurs were fuzzy?

2) Is the extrapolation of preserved integuments to other species that reliable, really?
Skin impressions and the remains of other integumentary structures are Holy Grails to palaeoartists, and we use them extensively in restoring extinct animals. Through phylogenetic bracketing, or use of their basic phylogenetic proxy when less data is available, we stretch these remains over entire clades so that the known integument of one species becomes the norm for an entire group - what I'll call 'One Skin Fits All' approach. Thus, because we have scaly skin impressions for three ceratopsids - Centrosaurus, Triceratops and Chasmosaurus (see image, above, of the latter. From Sternberg 1925), it's assumed that scales were common to the entire clade. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this assessment and, one may argue, it's the most parsimonious way to interpret this data. A stick in the mud, however, is that another dataset, the diversity of integuments in modern animals, suggests that integuments can vary wildly within groups, and that we could be vastly underestimating the integumentary variation in extinct animals.

Consider the different varieties of fluff, fur, feathers, hair, bristles and other fuzzes in a group of modern animals and then think how a future palaeoartist would reconstruct all varieties of that group if they only had access to only one or two examples of integument. Perhaps all reconstructions of bovids would have woolly coats like those of sheep, or, conversely, the sparse, almost naked skin like a water buffalo? We may deck all primates out in the long capes of colobus monkeys, all pigs with boar-like fur, or cover every inch of birds with feathers. We know such approaches are wrong because these groups demonstrably show variation in the distribution, length and structure of their varying integuments, and yet we maintain a One Skin Fits All' approach to fossil clades. We can't even play the 'extremely close relationship card' in this game as the likes of woolly mammoths, and the fuzzy Sumatran and woolly rhinos, show vastly different integuments to their closest, naked relatives.

One could counter this point by arguing that the relative abundance of scaly remains in certain dinosaur lineages suggest that most, if not all members of that clan were scaly. Perhaps, but we should consider both the sample sizes here and the taphonomic window through which fossils are passed to the modern day. We have, at best, skin impressions from a handful of species compared to the group diversity, so statistical support for the 'One Skin Fits All' approach is low. Moreover, which types of skin are more likely to be preserved? Taphonomic observations on modern animals suggest that fur and feathers are easily removed from carcasses by biological or physical processes, so their preservation potential in ancient animals is low outside of fossil Lagerstätten. Is it a coincidence that the only skin impressions we find outside of Lagerstätten are scaly, leathery hides? I don't have the answer to that question, but it's worth chewing over.

With all this in mind, I wonder if applying the fossil integuments of one species to all its relatives, even close ones, is a questionable practise. I'm not saying that skin impressions are useless and that we should pay them no attention, but we should remember that they only highlight possibilities and perhaps some degree of probability for integumentary structures in a related species. They may well also have no bearing whatsoever on the appearance of their relatives. We're dealing with a great amount of unknown data when reconstructing ancient integuments, and we know how complex this issue is through modern species. When applying this thought to horned dinosaurs, we can say that the scaly skin impressions we have for a few species demonstrate that some bore scales, but we cannot rule out the possibility that others were covered in entirely different structures, like the quills and fuzz that seem deeply rooted in dinosaur ancestry. It does seem likely that many centrosaurines heads, including Pachyrhinosaurus, bore heavily keratinised scales and pads (Hieronymus et al. 2009), but, of course, this doesn't tell us much about the rest of the body. The majority of skin in Pachyrhinosaurus could be scaly, fuzzy, or anywhere inbetween. Without skin impressions to directly tell us the integument of specific species, there's no way to be sure. We need to be careful that we do not afflict ourselves with palaeoartistic phyloblindness here, by only considering these animals as denizens of cladograms and evolutionary hypotheses. Phylogenies may tell us what is possible for integument reconstructions, but other factors may help us decide is more probable.

3) Phylogeny is far from the only factor controlling integument, and can be readily overruled
It's funny to think that, for all the time we spend looking at the phylogenies of extinct animals, we're often missing much about the raw power that drove their evolution: adaptation. This is probably because we're lacking so much anatomical detail in their fossils that their responses to even broad environmental changes are largely undetectable, so understanding why they change through time is not always as certain as how. Nevertheless, we can be sure that different environments drove modification to the anatomy of extinct lineages on small and large scales, and integuments were likely to be one of the most affected tissues. Animal integuments are critical interfaces between body and environment, and have to be appropriately adapted for given habitats. This is a readily observable phenomenon in modern animals, because their integuments reflect all sorts of environmental factors including sun exposure, temperature, local vegetation types, water availability, parasite prevalence, and their local predators. Presumably, this is why such variation in integument exists in even closely related species. But we frequently reconstruct fossil species as if they all live in the same place. Sedimentological and isotope data reveals that closely related ancient species sometimes lived in starkly contrasting settings, but because we frequently take the 'One Skin Fits All' approach, our animals look very similar, irrespective of the requirements of their habitats.

Hot Fuzz: a reference to the condensing breath of the animal, the controversial concept depicted here, or just an excuse for a bad pun? Whatever: it's an excuse to link to this clip from Hot Fuzz: Best. Granny. Kick. Ever.

Behaviour may also have an effect on integument. Sun-shy, non-aggressive and cursorial animals may well bear thinner integuments than slower, frequently exposed or bad-tempered species, for instance. Morphology, too, will have an influence, with larger animals having lessened needs for insulation or being capable of carrying heavier, armoured hides. These are all things palaeoartists should be considering when reconstructing extinct animals: they should look adapted to the lifestyles we predict for them, rather than being based on phylogenetic hypotheses alone. Perhaps some desert-living dinosaurs had elephant-like, deeply wrinkled skin to help heat dissipation, while smaller desert-dwellers had extremely short feathers, or none at all, to prevent overheating. Maybe large theropods had heavy scales on their faces to defend themselves during bouts of head biting. We don't know for sure, but we can be certain that these species had to be appropriately adapted for wherever and however they lived. In short, we need to be wary reconstructing our ancient species by cladogram alone, and realise that integuments, and soft-tissue anatomies in general, should reflect a combination of phylogenetic data and possible adaptations to habitats and lifestyles. This, undoubtedly, involves some of the 'informed speculation' that has been discussed so much with All Yesterdays, but the results are more consistent with our knowledge of modern animals and evolution generally, and arguably producing a more convincing look into the ancient world ('convincing' is the right word here: I'm not sure we're ever going to get 'accurate' results in this game). In fact, after mulling this over for some time, I find the typical and conservative, 'One Skin Fits All' approach much harder to defend than the more open minded, environmentally-influenced reconstructions argued for here.

Bringing this back to our fuzzy pachyrhinosaurs, we again have to question the how applicable the currently available ceratopsid skin impressions are to this Alaskan species. The scaly hides of Chasmosaurus, Centrosaurus and Triceratops represent animals living in more southerly regions than Pachyrhinosaurus,which were at least temperate to subtropical in climate. The former two taxa also lived somewhat before Pachyrhinosaurus, when global temperatures were, on average, a little warmer. These sub-arctic coastal plains encountered by Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum, by contrast, were much cooler, and sometimes genuinely cold.Accordingly, the selection pressures on integument may have been very different for P. perotorum compared to these warm-climate ceratopsids, and we have to wonder how suitable the skin impressions of Chasmosaurus et al. are for reconstructions of Pachyrhinosaurus. We wouldn't, after all, expect the integument of a yak to resemble that of a African buffalo, or consider the fur of a lithe gazelle a suitable model for mountain goat fur. With this philosophy in mind, the question of shaggy pachyrhinosaurs shifts focus from arguments about the cladograms and the skin impressions of their relatives, and on to whether or not Late Cretaceous Alaska was cold enough to promote the development of an extreme integument adaptation in a large dinosaur species.

4) Late Cretaceous Alaska: a struggle for any tourist board
Although nowhere near as bleak as our modern Alaska, the dinosaur faunas inhabiting the northern reaches of latest Cretaceous Alaska would have experienced fairly grim weather for much of the time, perhaps akin to that experienced by modern animals living on the northwest coast of Canada or the more depressing parts of Scotland. In a recent review based on palaeobotanical data from the Cretaceous Arctic, Spicer and Herman (2010) suggested that uppermost Cretaceous Alaska experienced mean average temperatures around 6°C, with summer months attaining a comfortable 14.5°C, but winter months dropping to an average of -2°C. The Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum-bearing Prince Creek Formation may have been a little cooler than other parts of the Late Cretaceous arctic circle, with a mean average temperature between 2.5-5°C. Winter lasts a long time at 80-90° latitude, with 5 of darkness bracketed by 2 months of twilight. A permanent cloud cap over the Late Cretaceous Arctic (detected by the oversize nature of the fossil plant leaves from Cretaceous Alaskan localities) acted as a atmospheric blanket for the region, prohibiting temperatures from plummeting below freezing low for long period. The lowest temperatures - perhaps -10°C - may not have lasted more than a few weeks. Evidence for deep freezes is absent however, with neither the sedimentological or palaeobotanical record indicating nothing more severe than week-long frosts and light freezes. Despite this, rain and snow were probably common, with relative humidity averaging about 80% and even the driest months of the year experiencing over 180 mm of rain. The collective three wettest months, by contrast, collected almost 800 mm. (To put this in perspective, rain-soaked England has an average annual rainfall of 854 mm, according to the UK Met Office [via Wikipedia]). Such a climate was capable of supporting a rich array of plantlife, and evergreen taiga-like forests were common, as were swamps, rivers and other bodies of water. Such conditions seem fairly common right the way through Late Cretaceous Alaska, with conditions a full 8° south of the Prince Creek Formation seeming similarly cold and wet. I should add that this consideration of ancient Alaska isn't particularly controversial, the palaeobotanical data mentioned here matching palaeoclimate models based on isotope records, animal distribution and sedimentology.

So the Prince Creek palaeoenviroment wasn't exactly an ideal holiday spot, but was it 'extreme' enough to promote the evolution of an fuzzy coat in a 1.5-2 tonne dinosaur species? Given the dense furs we see in large mammals found in similar climates, I think it's certainly a possibility. It would certainly be far weirder if polar dinosaurs of the Late Cretaceous didn't respond to their climate somehow, and a thick coat of protofeathers is one possible adaptation to their cool, wet habitat. A layer of insulating fat would be another (cue an image of some tubby pachyrhinosaurs). Of course, the picture may be different if these animals hibernated or migrated in and out of Alaska annually, enjoying the brief mild period before heading south to escape the winter. The latter is perhaps the most widely discussed concept, but direct evidence for such migrations in Alaskan dinosaurs is as sparse as evidence for their fluffy integuments or fat layers. In the concept proposed here, the protofeather coat may have acted as an insulator against the cold, prevented wind, rain and snow from hitting the naked skin of the animal, or both. The latter function would benefit from the coat being thick and fluffy, but this may not have lead to overheating even in a big animal like Pachyrhinosaurus: the ragged, loose coats of hot-climate adapted ratites appear similarly thick and massive without overheating their owners. Perhaps the concept of shaggy coats in these Alaskan dinosaurs doesn't seem so as implausible as it may first appear, then.

To bring this more-mammoth-than-intended essay to a close, then, I again stress that I'm not saying 'this is what Pachyrhinosaurus looked like!', but attempting to present it as a product of both its phylogenetic history, its environment and habits, and not simply reconstructed via a cladogram. I think there's a lot of scope for these sorts of palaeoartistic renditions, even it does mean more reliance on the 'informed speculation' principle of All Yesterdays. Of course, this whole argument flows back to the core idea behind the All Yesterdays movement: the conservative, 'One Skin Fits All' approach to integument reconstruction is just as likely to be wrong as our more speculative concepts, but at least the use of informed speculation lines the reconstruction up with our knowledge of modern animal diversity.

Wednesday, 2 January 2013

Exciting news: thanks to Rob Knell, Dave Hone, Joe Tomkins and Darren Naish, my old image of a male Pteranodon sternbergi and his harem has made the cover of the latest edition of TREE! This is the first time my artwork has featured so prominently on the front page of a journal or magazine, so it's certainly given 2013 an excellent start from my perspective. As may be expected, the illustration accompanies the recent Knell et al. (2013) review of sexual selection in prehistoric animals found in this edition of the journal (which, while I'm in trumpet blowing mode, features another image of mine, showing sexual dimorphism in Darwinopterus). Access to the paper seems unrestricted at the time of writing at least, so be sure to check it out, and thanks to the authors for asking me to be part of their work!

That will do for now: very busy putting the last few hours into a long-term project that will no doubt be of interest to some readers here. Check back for news soon. Happy New Year all!

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Palaeontologist and palaeoartist, based at the University of Portsmouth and specialising in flying reptiles. Check out my work at MarkWitton.com, follow me on Twitter @MarkWitton, and buy my book here. Contact me about my work at wittonprints@gmail.com.